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Saturday, September 29, 2012

A Singapore court has ordered veteran journalist and scholar
JMD to reveal his sources for his reporting on an audit of suspended world
soccer body FIFA vice president and Asian Football Confederation (AFC)
president Mohammed Bin Hammam's management of AFC's finances and agreement with
a Singapore-based company on the group's marketing rights.

The court accepted a demand by World Sports Group (WSG) to
instruct the journalist and scholar to reveal his sources on the grounds that
the audit was confidential and that the sources had defamed the company.

The court in a four-hour hearing however stayed its decision
pending an appeal that Mr. Dorsey's lawyers, N. Sreenivasan and Sujatha
Selvakumar of Straits Law Practice LLC, will submit in the coming days.

Mr. Dorsey's lawyers argued that he was not a party to any
confidentiality agreement and that if WSG had an issue it should take it up
with the AFC to whom the original report was addressed. The lawyers noted
further that the code of ethics of journalists in Singapore as well as in
numerous Asian countries, including Malaysia and Hong Kong shield journalists
from revealing sources.

In an affidavit to the court, Mr. Dorsey asserted that he
believed that WSG’s legal action was an attempt at “indirectly discovering who
within the AFC may have breached their confidentiality and also suppress any
well meaning or good intended person from coming forward in the future and is
seeking to punitively punish those who may have spoken against them.”

WSG has said it applied to the High Court to force Mr. Dorsey
to reveal his sources with the intention of launching possible defamation or
breach of confidence proceedings. "We want information so we can determine
what charges to make and against whom," WSG lawyer Deborah Barker told
Agence France Presse.

The internal AFC audit conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers
(PwC) charged that Mr. Bin Hammam had used an AFC sundry account as his
personal account, questioned the terms and negotiation procedure of a $1
billion marketing rights agreement between WSG and the AFC and raised questions
of $14 million in payments by a WSG shareholder to Mr. Bin Hammam prior to the
signing of the agreement.

In its report, PwC said that “it is highly unusual for funds
(especially in the amounts detailed here) that appear to be for the benefit of
Mr Hammam personally, to be deposited to an organization’s bank account. In
view of the recent allegations that have surrounded Mr Hammam, it is our view
that there is significant risk that…the AFC may have been used as a vehicle to
launder funds and that the funds have been credited to the former President for
an improper purpose (Money Laundering risk)” or that “the AFC may have been
used as a vehicle to launder the receipt and payment of bribes.”

Malaysian police earlier this month arrested the husband of
an associate of Mr. Bin Hammam on suspicion of helping steal documents related
to one of the payments to Mr. Bin Hammam from AFC’s head office in Kuala
Lumpur.

WSG has refused to comment on the PwC report and has
threatened reporters, including the author of this

report, with defamation
proceedings. However in an August 28, 2012 letter to this reporter WSG Group
Legal Advisor Stephanie McManus asserted that “PWC are incorrect and
misconceived in suggesting that the MRA was undervalued. They have neither
considered the terms of the contract correctly, the market, nor the
circumstances in which it was negotiated,” Ms. McManus wrote.

The master rights agreement is controversial both because of
the unexplained payments as well as assertions by sources close to the AFC that
the soccer group, in line with common practice among international sport
associations, should have concluded a service provider rather than a master
rights agreement with WSG. The sources said such an agreement would have given
the AFC greater control of its rights and how they are exploited and enabled it
to better supervise the quality of services provided by WSG.

In a July 13 letter to lawyers Shearn Delamore & Co, PWC
explicitly leaves open the possibility that the AFC might share the report with
third parties. For that reason, the terms of the report contain a clause that
shields PwC from any liability should the AFC choose to share the report with
non-AFC institutions or persons.

The letter stipulates that the report is intended “solely
for the internal use and benefit of Shearn Delamore & Co. and the Asian
Football Confederation,” and that third parties are not authorised to have
access to the report. The letter however goes on to say that should third
parties gain access they agree that the report was compiled in accordance with
instructions by the law firm and the AFC and that PwC is not liable for any
consequences stemming from the fact that third parties had been granted access.

Lawyers for FIFA earlier this year sought unsuccessfully to
introduce the report in Mr. Bin Hammam's appeal proceedings in the
Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration of Sport against the world soccer body's banning for
life of the Qatari national from involvement on soccer on charges of bribery.

Both FIFA and the AFC have suspended M. Bin Hammam on the
basis of the report pending further investigation of the allegations in the PwC
report and separate charges that he last year sought to bribe Caribbean soccer
officials. Mr. Bin Hammam has denied all allegations and charges.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

Supporters
of Leeds United have welcomed a Middle East bid to acquire their troubled
English soccer club with no clarity about who the real buyer is.

The Leeds
United Supporters Trust described the announcement by the Bahrain-based Gulf
Finance House in a letter to the island nation’s stock exchange that one of its
subsidiaries, GFH Capital Limited, had agreed to “lead and arrange the
acquisition of Leeds City Holdings,” the parent company of Leeds United, as “great
news.”

Trust
chairman Garry Cooper said Leeds fans were “hoping for investment in the team
and for Leeds United to be glorious again.” He noted that a return of the club
to the Premier League after it was relegated in 2007 to England’s second
division as a result of its financial problems would reap its new owners
profits from Leeds United’s share in the GBP 3.2 billion in broadcast revenues.

The risk is
however that GFH because of a confidentiality clause declined to reveal on
behalf of which Middle Eastern investor it was acting. Middle Eastern
investment in European soccer has proven to be a mixed blessing with some clubs
such as Manchester City rising from the doldrums to win the Premier League and
Paris St. Germain beneftting and pushing ahead in performance and others like
Servette FC, Malaga SC and Portsmouth FC struggling with the fallout of
investors failing to live up to expectations.

As a result, the key question for Leeds supporters should be who is the investor and what is the purpose of the acquisition; those are questions that have yet to be answered.

For its part, Portsmouth,
financially bankrupt and relegated from the premier to the third league after
two acquisitions by different Arab owners with little real interest in the club, is
currently facing the question whether it wishes to give Middle East investors a
third chance.

GFH itself,
an Islamic investment bank, has struggled financially in recent years. It
agreed in May with creditors on a plan to restructure $110 million debt.

The
difference between a Middle Eastern soccer investment that pays off and one
that can deepen problems appears to be whether the investor is institutional or
a member of a Gulf royal family with a strategic interest in the acquisition or
a businessman operating on his own.

GFH is
believed to have been engaged by private investors rather than one of the region’s
sovereign wealth funds involved in the more successful European soccer
acquisitions.

To be fair,
the successful acquisition of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al
Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal families who sits on the board of
several of the emirate’s key economic entities, was initially fronted by United
Arab Emirates billionaire businessman Sulaiman al-Fahim. Similarly, PSG was
purchased by the Qatar Sport Investment, the Gulf state’s premier sport investment
vehicle.

These
soccer investments by Qatar and the UAE serve to increase the small Gulf states' international prestige, enable them to punch internationally above their
weight, build sports as an economic sector that enhances tourism and makes them
key nodes in the world’s sports infrastructure and provides leverage for
further business opportunities. Qatar moreover has identified sports as a key
pillar of a national identity it is trying to forge. The strategy is long-term
and is reflected in the two states’ approach towards their sport investments.

However, Mr.
Al Fahim’s subsequent acquisition of Portsmouth sent the struggling club off
the deep end. The businessmen acquired Portsmouth in April 2009 after he had pushed
aside by the Abu Dhabi royals. He defeated a rival bid by the club’s CEO Peter
Storrie, who was backed by Saudi property tycoon Ali Al-Faraj. Barely five
months later, Mr. Al-Fahim sold 90 per cent of his stake to Mr. Al-Faraj whose
equally brief reign effectively put the company definitively on the road to
humiliation and administration.

Like
Portsmouth, Malaga is experiencing the travails of a businessman who has taken
on more than he has wanted or is able to bite even if it is in better shape
than the English club. Malaga went through a high acquiring numerous players
after it was independently acquired in 2010 by Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani, a
member of the Qatari royal family. The acquisitions helped the club qualify for
the Champions League for the first time in their history.

The writing
was nonetheless on the wall when soon after its qualification when players
initially were not paid and the club was forced to start selling some of its
most valuable assets. With a debt of 90 million euros, Malaga too could be
relegated and may have to forfeit competing in the Champions League.

Geneva’s
Swiss Super League club Servette FC and Austria’s Admira Wacker haven’t fared
much better. Servette is on the brink of collapse after Iranian businessman
Majid Pishyar who acquired it in 2008. It filed for bankruptcy earlier this
year. Mr. Pishyar, who managed the club on a shoe string, tried unsuccessfully
to attract government funding by last year appointing Robert Hensler, a former
top civil servant for the canton of Geneva, as vice-president. His earlier
efforts to salvage Admira, his first European acquisition, failed too.
Servette’s problems come on the heels of the bankruptcy in January of
Neuchatel’s Super League team Xamax whose Chechen owner was arrested on charges
of fraud and financial mismanagement.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

RSIS presents the
following commentary Impact of Anti-US Protests: Healthy Change in the Muslim
World by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click
on this link.). Kindly forward
anycomments
or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg

No. 179/2012 dated 25 September 2012

Impact
of Anti-US Protests:
Healthy Change in the Muslim World

By James M. Dorsey

Synopsis

Demonstrations
against an American-made anti-Islam video clip have sparked fierce debates in the
Muslim world. They also provoked demonstrations against militant Islamists and
spurred initiatives by governments and religious authorities to turn anger into
constructive engagement with the rest of the world.

Commentary

THIS MONTH’s violent
protests in Muslim countries against the bigoted anti-Islam video on the
Internet have taken place against the backdrop of popular uprisings in the
Middle East and North Africa over the past two years. They have catalysed a
change in the attitude and approach of Muslims, which had over the past two
decades reacted to perceived insults to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad with a
series of protests that produced death and destruction, which in retrospect are
little more than blips on the radar of history.

To be sure, this month’s protests were as lethal as the past protests including
those following Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against British writer
Salman Rushdie, the 2004 killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh for producing
a film critical of Islam’s treatment of women, and the 2005 Danish anti-Muslim
cartoons. Scores have been killed in the recent protests, most prominent of
whom was US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Historic change

However unlike past protests, this month’s outrage has produced historic change
with protests against Islamist militants; debate about the role of religion in
politics; how Muslims should respond to blasphemy; the limits of freedom of
expression; and initiatives to engage in dialogue with the non-Muslim world. In
effect the anti-Islam video clip, which got more than 30 million hits since the
protests erupted, may have been the spark but the protests were really about
the kind of society the Arab world is striving for and struggles for power
among Islamists. Also as in the case of militant soccer fans in Egypt, they
were a settling of scores with the police and security forces, the foremost
remnants of the ousted regime of former president Hosni Mubarak.

In the most dramatic expression of change, angry Libyan protesters last weekend
attacked Ansar al Sharia, the militant Islamist group believed to be
responsible for Stevens’ death, forcing the group to abandon its base in the
city of Benghazi and the government to announce a crackdown on the country’s
myriad of armed groups.

Similarly, Egyptian activists have taken legal action against Ahmed Abdullah
aka Abu Islam, who burnt a bible during last week’s protest in front of the US
embassy in Cairo, and television host Khaled Abdullah who first aired the
controversial video clip, The Innocence of Islam, on Salafist Al Nast tv. On
Facebook, the “We are all Khaled Said” page that played an important role in
mobilising last year’s protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, listed reasons why
Muslims should have ignored the video rather than ensure its popularity.

Turning anger into
positive engagement

In Lebanon, a
presenter on Future TV that is owned by Sunni Lebanese leader Saad Hariri,
denounced the Shiite militia head Hassan Nasrallah as a hypocrite in a
15-minute political diatribe, for calling for protests against the video clip
while remaining silent about the Assad regime’s destruction of mosques and
killing of Muslims in Syria. Similarly, Sheikh Assir, a hardline cleric at an
anti-video protest in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, denounced Hezbollah
for displaying portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at a rally,
describing him as a butcher.

The cleric charged that Hezbollah was exploiting the protests to polish its
image tarnished by the group’s support of Assad. "Why didn't Sheikh
Nasrallah do anything when the prophets of freedom were martyred in
Syria?" he asked, adding that Assad committed blasphemy by forcing
prisoners to say “There is no God but Bashar al Assad,” rather than the Muslim
oath of faith, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet.”

The protests have also persuaded some governments and religious authorities to
turn anger into positive engagement. Qatar has announced that it is investing
US$450 million in a three-part epic that depicts the life of Prophet Muhammad.
Ali Goma, the grand mufti of Egypt urged Muslims to "follow the Prophet's
example of enduring insults without retaliating" and reportedly is looking
at launching an international campaign under the motto, ‘Know Muhammad,’ to
explain Islam to the non-Muslim world.

Important step forward

On the other hand, the protests have also strengthened the hand of Muslim
conservatives who insist on strict laws against blasphemy and limiting freedom
of expression to ensure that Islam is shielded against criticism and mockery.
Salafis in Egypt could succeed in pressuring the Muslim Brotherhood to include
a ban on blasphemy in the drafting of the country’s new constitution. A similar
provision has already been included in the draft Tunisian constitution. Saudi
grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh and the grand imam of Cairo’s Al Azhar
University, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayyeb, called separately for the criminalisation
of all insults of religious prophets and messengers.

Without doubt, a majority in nations across the Middle East and North Africa
rejects expressions of blasphemy and supports laws against insults of Islam
across the region. Nevertheless, the debate sparked by the recent anti-video
protests is largely reflective of the tensions in societies transiting from
autocracy to a more open form of government. For Islamists the struggle against
blasphemy is in part a response to autocratic repression that, for example in
Tunisia, targeted men with long beards who attended dawn prayers. Liberals
across the region walk a tightrope between advocating freedom of speech that
would allow criticism and mockery of religion and losing whatever public
support they may have.

Change produced by the most recent protests is unlikely to amount to Western-style
liberalism. It does however constitute a watershed in which people for the
first time draw lines that they could not draw before and in which anger
pent-up in societies with no release valves or manipulated by autocratic
rulers, not only spills into the streets but is also being channeled into
engagement. It may be just one step forward, but nonetheless, it is an
important step.

James M. Dorsey is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is also the
author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

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Sunday, September 23, 2012

The Kosovo
Football Federation (KFF) and soccer-crazy Kosovars are not the only ones in
anxious anticipation of this coming Friday’s executive committee meeting of
world soccer body FIFA that is expected to decide the terms on which Kosovo
will be allowed to play international friendlies. So will the Kurdistan
Football Association and equally soccer-mad Kurds.

Kosovo and
Catalonia, which already has been granted permission by FIFA to play
international friendlies, are models for Kurdistan to whom soccer is also an
important tool in achieving recognition as a nation and statehood.

For
Kurdistan, it is an uphill battle. Kosovo and Catalonia have a leg up on
Kosovo. Unlike Kurdistan, an autonomous
region in Iraq that enjoys no recognition from an international community
afraid that its independence would further destabilize the Middle East, Kosovo
has been recognized by the United States, 36 European nations including 22
European Union members, and 54 other countries.

Kosovo
moreover is a member of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In
addition, Kosovo achieved full sovereignty this month with the ending of
international supervision imposed after it unilaterally declared independence
from Serbia in 2008. For its part, Catalonia’s bid was backed by the Spanish
Football Federation.

Kurdistan
has none of those assets. The KFF’s relations with the Iraqi soccer body are
strained with Iraqis weary of Kurdish efforts to strike out on their own. Unable
to breakthrough internationally, Kurdistan organized last June the 5th VIVA
world cup for nations that FIFA refuses to recognize. Competing teams included
Kurdistan, Northern Cyprus the Tamils, Western Sahara and Darfur.

In a
September 14 letter to FIFA, the KFF welcomed FIFA’s decision in May to grant
Kosovo the right to play international friendlies and requested that that right
be applicable to “football as a whole, national clubs and teams, men’s and
women’s, age categories and senior teams.”

The KFF
noted that “Kosovo is not a place where football is embryonic and has to be
sustained from a low level. The Football Federation of Kosovo became a member
of the FA of Yugoslavia in 1946 with equal rights and the pyramid is complete
with leagues and competitions from the top down to the bottom totally in line
with FIFA and (European soccer body) UEFA requirements.”

That is in
many ways true for Kurdistan too, which like Kosovo has Kurds playing in major
European clubs. Nonetheless, the hardnosed, realpolitik objections to Kurdistan,
for all practical matters a state-in-waiting, following in the shoes of Kosovo
and Catalonia outweigh the moral arguments in its favor.

FIFA’s
embrace of Kosovo will nevertheless make Kurdistan and others all the more
determined to achieve equal soccer status. A statement by Iraqi Kurdish
president Massoud Barzani equating sports to politics as a way of achieving
recognition adorns Iraqi Kurdistan’s three major stadiums and virtually all of
its sports centers and institutions. “We want to serve our nation and use
sports to get everything for our nation. We all believe in what the president
said,” says KFF president Safin Kanabi, scion of a legendary supporter of Kurdish
soccer who led anti-regime protests in Kurdish stadiums during Saddam Hussein’s
rule.

“Like any
nation, we want to open the door through football. Take Brazil. People know
Brazil first and foremost through football. We want to do the same. We want to
have a strong team by the time we have a country. We do our job, politicians do
theirs. Inshallah (if God wills), we will have a country and a flag” adds
Kurdistan national coach Abdullah Mahmoud Muhieddin.

With other
words, soccer may not achieve immediate political and diplomatic recognition
but it certainly puts nations in the public eye. “Our external objective is
primarily to project our identity through sports. Many people don't know our
problem or would not be able to find us on a map. Soccer can change that. We
had a French woman visit our refugee camps. When she told children that she was
from France, they all replied saying Zidan” – a reference to retired star
soccer player Zinedine Zidan, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, argues , said
Sheikh Sidi Tigani, president of the Western Sahara Football Federation. “We’ve
replaced the gun with a soccer ball,” adds West Saharan national sports
director Mohammed Bougleida.

In using
soccer as a tool to further nation and statehood, Kosovars, Kurds and West
Saharan exploit a tradition established at the time that soccer was introduced
in the Middle East and North Africa by the British when soccer was a tool to
resist European colonialism and assert Arab interests internationally.

“Our
success with VIVA demonstrates our ability to govern ourselves. Our goal for
now is to be part of FIFA. All languages are represented in FIFA, only Kurdish
isn’t while (FIFA president Sepp) Blatter claims that football is for everyone.
We are human. We want the world to understand Kurdistan’s contribution,” says
Mr. Kanabi.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Iranian state television has accused Singapore-based marketer
World Sport Group (WSG) of trying to overcharge it for the broadcasting of
Iranian national team 2014 World Cup qualifiers qualifiers in what it said was
a breach of international rules.

The television’s legal counsel, Gholamreza Rafiee, said in a
live interview quoted by Iranian news agency Kabir News that “four years ago at
the same time we paid $4 million to broadcast Team Melli matches in World Cup
qualification. But now World Sport Group wants to charge us over $40 for the
same service. We paid $7.5 to broadcast World Cup 2010 and we bought the London
2012 broadcasting right for only $1 million. World Sport Group is trying to
swindle Asian countries for broadcasting World Cup qualification matches.”

Mr. Rafiee said that Lebanese television had earlier this
month for the same reason refused to pay WSG for the broadcasting of a World
Cup qualifier in which Lebanon surprisingly defeated Iran. He said that WSG was
encountering similar problems in South Korea. Mr. Rafiee’s assertions could not
be immediately independently verified.

Kabir News said WSG’s hiking of broadcast rights for 2014
World Cup qualifiers had angered fans in Asia.

Apparent tension between WSG and national broadcasters comes
as questions have arisen about the nature, terms and value of the company’s $1
billion marketing rights agreement with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

Questions have also been asked about payments at the time
that the WSG contract was being negotiated by a WSG shareholder to Mohammed Bin
Hammam, the disgraced AFC president and world soccer body FIFA vice president.
Mr. Bin Hammam has been suspended since more than a year initially on suspicion
of bribery and more recently on the basis of an audit that accuses him of
financial mismanagement and raises multiple concerns about AFC’s contractual
relationship with WSG. The Qatari national has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Malaysian police last week arrested a man believed to be an
associate of Mr. Bin Hammam on suspicion of theft of documents from AFC’s
offices in Kuala Lumpur related to one of the WSG shareholder’s payments.

AFC
lawyer Mohamad Bustaman Abdullah said Tony Kang, the husband of Amelia Gan, the
soccer body’s finance director under Mr. Bin Hammam, who was let go earlier
this year, had surrendered himself to Malaysian police and was expected to be
charged in court for his role in the theft.

AFC reported the theft in late July after an audit by
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) raised questions about a payment of $2 million
payment in 2008 by Saudi Arabia-based International Sports Events (ISE), one of
three WSG shareholders, according to the company’s website. The audit said that
the money had been paid into an AFC sundry account for Mr. Bin Hammam’s
personal use. It said the payment by ISE, which is believed to have a ten per
cent stake in WSG, as well as a second payment of $12 million by a related
company, Al Baraka Investment and Development Co., were “of interest.
Transactions of significant value between these parties (of both a business and
purportedly personal nature) occurred around the time of the ($1 billion master
rights) MRA contract negotiations with WSG,” PwC said in its report.

PwC said further that “it is highly unusual for funds
(especially in the amounts detailed here) that appear to be for the benefit of
Mr Hammam personally, to be deposited to an organization’s bank account. In
view of the recent allegations that have surrounded Mr Hammam, it is our view
that there is significant risk that…the AFC may have been used as a vehicle to
launder funds and that the funds have been credited to the former President for
an improper purpose (Money Laundering risk)” or that “the AFC may have been
used as a vehicle to launder the receipt and payment of bribes.”

WSG has refused to comment on the PwC report and has failed
to respond to various requests for comment by this reporter in the past 15
month. However, WSG Group legal counsel Stephanie McManus in an August 28
letter in advance of initiating legal proceedings against this reporter in a
bid to squash reporting and intimidate sources said that “PWC are incorrect and
misconceived in suggesting that the MRA was undervalued. They have neither
considered the terms of the contract correctly, the market, nor the circumstances
in which it was negotiated.” Ms. McManus did not elaborate.

Nonetheless, obviously stung by broad media reporting on the
PwC report, WSG in a reversal of its no comment and failed intimidation policy was
quick to deny the Iranian television assertions. WSG spokeswoman Shyamala
Velappan in a statement sent to Kabir News denied Mr. Rafiee’s claims.

“The information Mr. Rafiee has presented is incorrect and
misleading. Firstly, the previous agreement to broadcast various AFC events for
the period 2009 – 2012 was valued at US$4.5 million. The broadcast rights fee which we are
negotiating with IRIB for the new cycle is US$11 million for all AFC national
team and club competitions, which consist of approximately 1,300 matches over a
four year period, not just the FIFA World Cup 2014 AFC qualifying matches. To put this figure into context, it
represents only a tiny fraction of the rights fees being paid by other
countries in the Middle-East for the same number of matches,” Kabir News quoted
Ms. Velappan as saying.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Egyptian militant soccer fans, one of the country’s largest
civic groups, won their second political victory this month with the Egyptian
Football Associations’ (EFA) disqualification of world soccer body FIFA
executive committee member Hani Abou-Reida as a candidate for the EFA
presidency.

Mr. Abou-Reida’s disqualification was one of six demands put
forward by Ultras Ahlawy, the militant, highly politicised, street
battle-hardened support group of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC. The militants
issued their demands after first storming an Al Ahly training ground and then
the EFA’s headquarters.

Mr. Abou-Reida, believed to be close to disgraced FIFA
vice-president and Asian Football Confederation president Mohammed Bin Hammam,
who was suspended 15 months ago on charges of bribery, corruption and financial
mismanagement, was a member of Mr. Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party
(NDP).

Mr. Abou-Reida was further reported to have accompanied Mr. Bin Hammam last
year on a private jet to Trinidad where the Qatari national allegedly sought to
buy the votes of Caribbean soccer officials in his failed bid to challenge FIFA
president Sepp Blatter for the soccer body’s presidency.

The ultras also accused Mr. Abou-Reida of protecting Al
Masri SC from severe punishment for an attack on Al Ahly fans in February in a
politically loaded brawl after a match between the two teams in Port Said that
left 74 people dead. Mr. Abou-Reida has not been charged with any Port
Said-related offence.

“Abou-Reida’s departure paves the way for Egyptian soccer to
be managed by real soccer officials rather than by Bin Hammam protégés. His
departure also removes one of the pillars of mismanagement in African soccer,”
said a source familiar with the inner workings of the world’s major soccer
bodies.

The EFA said Mr. Abou-Reida, who last year resigned as EFA
vice president, would only be able to run for the soccer body’s presidency in
four years’ time because he had already served two consecutive terms as
president. Mr. Abou-Reida is expected to challenge the EFA decision, which
leaves businessman Ihab Saleh, former Ismaili player Osama Khalil and Luxor
club chairman Galal Allam as candidates for the soccer body’s presidency.

Besides Mr. Abou-Reida’s disqualification, the ultras
demanded the resignation of Al Ahly’s board headed by Hassan Hamdy, another
leftover from ousted president Hosni Mubarak’s era, an end to corruption in
Egyptian soccer, depriving the police and security forces of responsibility for
security in stadiums, continued suspension of professional league matches until
justice has been done for the 74 dead Al
Alhly fans, and unrestricted access to matches for club supporters.

Mr. Hamdy’s endorsement of Mr Abou-Reida fanned the ultras’
distrust of the Al Ahly chairman whom they accuse of corruption. Mr. Hamdy
doubles as head of the advertising department of Al Ahram, Egypt’s state-owned
and largest newspaper. "We demand the resignation of Hassan Hamdy's
corrupt board, which neglected the rights of the martyrs. Hamdy endorsed
Abou-Reida merely to serve his own interests," the ultras said in a
statement on their Facebook page that has some 577,000 followers.

Authorities earlier this month caved in to the demand for a
continued suspension of matches by delaying the resumption of professional
soccer until mid-October. Professional soccer has been suspended in Egypt since
the Port Said soccer incident when rival fans and unidentified armed elements
attacked the ultras after a match against Al Masri in an incident that was
widely seen as an effort to teach a lesson to the militants, who played a key
role in toppling Mr. Mubarak and in the opposition to military rule during the
17-month run-up to elections in July that brought Muslim Brother Mohammed Morsi
to power.

The interior ministry, which controls the police and
security forces, who are despised for their role in implementing the Mubarak
regime’s repression and fought running battles with the ultras during the
ousted president’s last four years in office, agreed last month to a lifting of
the ban on soccer provided matches would be played behind closed doors. The
ultras threatened to storm stadiums where matches would be played if soccer was
resumed prior to the meting out of justice to those responsible for the Port
Said incident and if the ban on fan attendance was not lifted. Seventy-four
people, including nine security officials, are on trial for their alleged
involvement in the brawl.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Malaysian authorities have arrested an associate of
suspended Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and world soccer body FIFA vice
president Mohammed bin Hammam on suspicion of theft of documents from AFC’s
offices in Kuala Lumpur.

A AFC lawyer, Mohamad Bustaman Abdullah, identified the
associate as Tony Kang, the husband of AFC’s finance director under Mr. Bin
Hammam, who was let go after allegations of financial misconduct surfaced
against the Qatari national, according to Agence France Press (AFP).

Mr. Abdullah said Mr. Kang had surrendered himself to
Malaysian police and is expected to be charged in court in Kuala Lumpur after
police reports identified him as having participated in the theft.

Mr. Kang’s arrest came as FIFA launched a new probe into
allegations that Mr. Bin Hammam had last year sought to buy the votes of
Caribbean soccer officials in his failed bid to challenge FIFA president Sepp
Blatter in elections for the group’s presidency. Investigators have demanded
documents from those involved at an extraordinary meeting of the Caribbean
Football Union (CFU), where the bribes were allegedly paid on Mr. Bin Hammam's
behalf, according to The Telegraph.

A Fifa-headed letter dated Sept 7 gave recipients a week’s
notice for the delivery of “all correspondence including emails, texts, SMS
messages, letters or notes related to Fifa, CFU, Concacaf (the Caribbean, North
and Central American confederation) or any other football-related entity with
which you’ve been affiliated. A list of all email addresses and accounts —
including personal, CFU, Concacaf accounts, as relevant — you have used... All
financial records related to Fifa, CFU, Concacaf or any other football-related
entity with which you’ve been affiliated,” the newspaper said.

The FIFA investigation is in response to a ruling in July of
the Court of the Arbitration of Sport (CAS) that overturned FIFA’s banning for
life in July of last year of Mr. Bin Hammam from all involvement in
professional soccer because of the bribery allegations. The court said FIFA had
produced insufficient evidence for the ban, but made clear that its verdict was
not a declaration that Mr. Bin Hammam was innocent and urged FIFA to do a more
thorough investigation.

Malaysian police are investigating the theft of documents
from the AFC’s premises after the Asian soccer body reported that documents
related to a payment by International Sports Events (ISE), a shareholder of
Singapore-based World Sports Group (WSG), to Mr. Bin Hammam, had gone missing and
were allegedly handed over to an associate of Mr. Bin Hammam, according to
Malaysian police reports and sources close to the AFC.

The AFC report was filed on July 31 by AFC finance director
Kuan Wee Hong. Mr. Hong told the police in subsequent statements that the
documents had been handed over to a Chinese male by the name of Tony Kang.

Mr. Kang’s wife has since her departure from the AFC been
employed in Mr. Bin Hammam’s home country as a club licensing officer by Qatar
Stars League, which is headed by a member of the Qatari royal family, Sheikh
Hamad Bin Khalifa Bin Ahmad Al Thani.

The missing documents relate to a $2 million payment in 2008
by Saudi Arabia-based ISE, one of three shareholders of Singapore-based World
Sports Group (WSG), according to the company’s website. A recent internal AFC
audit conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) said that the money had been
paid to Mr. Bin Hammam for his personal use. The PwC report said the payment by
ISE, which is believed to have a ten per cent stake in WSG, as well as a second
payment of $12 million by a related company, Al Baraka Investment and
Development Co., were “of interest. Transactions of significant value between
these parties (of both a business and purportedly personal nature) occurred
around the time of the MRA contract (a controversial $1 billion master rights
agreement) negotiations with WSG,” PwC said in its report.

PwC said that Al Baraka “may (through the Arab Radio &
Television Co., which it owns) have been a 20% beneficial owner of the group at
that time (of the payment). Further, our enquiries indicate that Mr Mohyedin
Saleh Kamel, the Assistant Chief Executive Officer (Investments) of the Dallah
Al-Baraka Group may have been (from 2005 2009) the Managing Director of ISE.”
Al Baraka is a finance arm of Dallah Al Baraka that is owned by Saudi
billionaire Saleh Kamel. PwC said that Mohyedin Saleh Kamel is believed to be
Mr. Kamel’s son. It said that ART and ISE appear to share a post office box in
Saudi Arabia. Neither Messrs. Kamel or their companies could be reached for
comment.

In its report, PwC said that “it is highly unusual for funds
(especially in the amounts detailed here) that appear to be for the benefit of
Mr Hammam personally, to be deposited to an organization’s bank account. In
view of the recent allegations that have surrounded Mr Hammam, it is our view
that there is significant risk that…the AFC may have been used as a vehicle to
launder funds and that the funds have been credited to the former President for
an improper purpose (Money Laundering risk)” or that “the AFC may have been
used as a vehicle to launder the receipt and payment of bribes.”

WSG has refused to comment on the PwC report and has
threatened reporters, including the author of this report, with defamation
proceedings. WSG has filed legal action against this writer, who has reported
extensively on the Bin Hammam affair, in a bid to force him to disclose his
sources and intimidate potential sources. Qatar Holding LLC, an investment arm
of Qatar, holds a ten per cent stake in France’s Lagardere Unlimited, WSG’s
largest shareholder, according to Lagardere’s 2011 annual report.

However in an August 28, 2012 letter to this reporter WSG
Group Legal Advisor Stephanie McManus asserted that “PWC are incorrect and
misconceived in suggesting that the MRA was undervalued. They have neither
considered the terms of the contract correctly, the market, nor the
circumstances in which it was negotiated,” Ms. McManus wrote.

The agreement is controversial both because of the
unexplained payments as well as assertions by sources close to the AFC that the
soccer group, in line with common practice among international sport associations,
should have concluded a service provider rather than a master rights agreement
with WSG. The sources said such an agreement would have given the AFC greater
control of its rights and how they are exploited and enabled it to better
supervise the quality of services provided by WSG.

A July 31 Malaysian police report of AFC finance director
Hong’s complaint says that he noticed that an “important document, which
contained a bank report/statements belonging to former AFC president (Mohammad
b Hammam), was missing from my office.” Mr. Hong told the police that he and a
colleague, James Johnson, had last reviewed the document on July 13 and that
“after that I kept the document back in a storage drawer” until he discovered
that it was missing.

Sources close to the AFC said that the soccer body within
hours of reporting the missing document received a letter from Mr. Bin Hammam’s
Malaysian lawyers accusing it of being responsible for the disappearance. The
sources said the AFC had asked the Malaysian police to give it several days to
conduct its own internal investigation before looking into the matter.

A second Malaysian police report dated August 11
corroborated by sources close to the AFC quoted Mr. Hong as reporting to the
police that AFC staffer Selina Lee Siew Choo, “had admitted taking the file
(containing the documents) and said she had handed them to a male Chinese known
as Tony, the husband of Ms Amelia Gan, who was the former (AFC) Finance
Director. Selina had also admitted making a copy of a bank document advice for
a transaction worth USD $2 million, which was a payment from ISE.”

A August 15 Malaysian police report, also corroborated by
sources close to the AFC, quoted Mr. Hong as saying that Ms. Choo on August 2
had “admitted stealing the file from the drawer in my office as instructed by
Ms Amelia Gan (former finance director at AFC). Her instructions were to steal
the file which showed the document/ bank advice containing the US$2 million
transaction from ISE and surrender them to her husband, Tony Kang.”

The report quoted Mr. Hong as further saying that “I have my
suspicions/reasons to believe that the theft of the file was to dispose
evidence involving a case of wrongful management of AFC accounts by Mohammad
Bin Hammam in the wake of a financial audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers.”

The PwC report constituted the basis on which Mr. Bin
Hammam’s suspension from the AFC and FIFA was extended. The report allowed the
two groups to postpone any reinstatement of Mr. Bin Hammam after his banning
was overturned by CAS.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile